GLAA statement on Cada Vez dispute

[Note: GLAA issued the following statement in response to a query from reporter
Lou Chibbaro of The Washington Blade. For background, see the Related Links
box on this page.]

From:

Rick Rosendall

To:

Lou Chibbaro

Sent:

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 8:10 AM

Subject:

Cada Vez/video surveillance

Lou,

GLAA believes that the overzealous tactics by some of the restaurant's
opponents deserve a rebuke.

The videotaping of Cada Vez customers is a form of harassment, and the
owners should consider complaining to police about loitering outside their
establishment. If it turns out that Jeff Coudriet is right that the
restaurant's
opponents are free to use the public sidewalk for this purpose, then two
can play that game. As Frank Kameny suggests, the club's defenders are
equally free to stand in the way of the cameras to protect the privacy of
the
customers. If such confrontations lead to a public disturbance, that should
be seen as discrediting the restaurant's opponents, since they are
provoking disturbances while claiming to want peace and quiet.

We also believe that regulators should take steps to prevent the misuse
of anonymous complaints. While confidentiality of complaints should be
preserved, the names of complainants should be recorded by regulators
to help identify persons who repeatedly file complaints in a bad-faith
effort to harass a particular business. Persons with a record of frequent
complaints not sustained by the evidence should have their subsequent
complaints flagged as suspicious, should receive a warning, and should
be fined if their abuse of the system continues. If multiple investigations
show a particular complaint against a business to be without merit, a
moratorium of 90 to 120 days should be imposed on repeat investigations
of substantially the same complaint. There is no reason why law-abiding
businesses should have to endure this sort of harassment, nor why
taxpayers should have to subsidize personal vendettas by unreasonable
neighbors who wish to turn a lively city into a quiet suburb.

Either an establishment is meeting the requirements of its license or it
isn't. Given your report that Cada Vez "has met the 45 percent food
requirement each year that it has operated," that should end the matter.
The opponents' claim that Cada Vez is "really" operating as a nightclub
amounts to an effort to set aside the rules. It is awfully brazen for the
NIMBYs, who are repeated, recidivist gamers of the system, to act as
if they are shocked, shocked when business owners use the rules to
defend themselves. The difference between the two is that the
businesses are bearing all of the financial risk while serving customers
and generating tax revenue.